


I'm With You

by ohofcourse



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Character Study, Feelings, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Murder, Relationship Study, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:28:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25133170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohofcourse/pseuds/ohofcourse
Summary: Assassin-Illumi strikes. He and Hisoka talk about their feelings on the street.
Relationships: Hisoka/Illumi Zoldyck
Comments: 16
Kudos: 362





	I'm With You

**Author's Note:**

> I've been reading this poetry anthology (A Book of Luminous Things by Czeslaw Milosz) and it's been making me want to attempt something resembling a character study? I find Illumi and Hisoka's relationship very interesting, and weirdly familiar, so I wanted to explore it! Enjoy!

“Your boyfriend has issues,” the man said, tilting his head sideways to look at Hisoka. The jester didn’t look back. He was watching Illumi through a pair of pink-tinted heart-shaped glasses. He found the way they dug into the bridge of his nose irritating, but they looked too good to take off. Besides, they had made Illumi smile when he first put them on. 

Illumi was not smiling now. 

Hisoka did agree that Illumi had issues. It would have been odd if he  _ didn’t _ have issues, given his upbringing. Still, he didn’t like it when absolute strangers pointed that out. It betrayed an arrogance that Hisoka disliked, a lack of fear. He didn’t mind people being unafraid of him. Sometimes Hisoka was just too charming. But, they really ought to be afraid of Illumi. 

It was Illumi after all. 

He had his thumb buried in a man’s eye socket. The overly long sleeves of his dress shirt covered most of the man’s face, but Hisoka had no trouble recognizing him as the man who had quietly asked a passing waiter to remove Hisoka from the restricted section of the invitation-only bar they were in. 

Hisoka did not agree with most of the Zoldyck family’s methods in training their children, but he had to admit, they certainly created some impressive assassins. Illumi had heard the man’s request from the opposite end of the bar while sipping a glass of green chartreuse, while Hisoka was trying to stick his hand down his pants. Calling it anything less than impressive would be a snub. 

“Apologize,” Illumi said very quietly. The man underneath him gurgled. His wife was drooling in her seat, four pins buried in the botoxed part of skin between her brows. 

“ _ Please _ ,” Illumi spat suddenly, “ _ Apologize _ .” His long, dark hair had fallen gracefully from its loose knot at the back of his head. Now, it trembled slightly, like the surface of a lake, as he spoke. The ends pooled at the man’s cheeks. Hisoka wondered absently if the man could smell the cool, crushing scent of pine and peppermint, Illumi’s signature shampoo, or if the only thing he could smell was his own blood dripping down his cheek. Maybe Illumi’s thumb had gone in too deep and the man couldn’t smell at all. 

“Can’t you stop him?” The manager desperately asked. He was a sweating, balding man, nearly bursting out of his tuxedo. When they had first arrived, he had bounced and bustled around them in a dizzying circle. Illumi’s lip had wrinkled. Hisoka had wanted to kiss it. Now, the manager was laughably still, like someone had paralyzed him. His fat lower lip and his nonexistent top one trembled at slightly different tempos. His brow grew increasingly shinier with every second Illumi kept his thumb inside the man’s face. 

“No,” Hisoka said honestly. Even if he could stop Illumi, he wouldn’t. At this angle, Illumi was looking especially lovely. His pants had been washed, not dry-cleaned, by accident, and what a happy accident it was. Expensive wool stretched almost obscenely at the crease of Illumi’s hip. Wool stretched obscenely elsewhere, too. 

“Fucking say you’re sorry,” Illumi said, quiet, gentle, almost lovingly. Hisoka was absolutely hard now. Most of the guests of the bar had fallen into an almost reverent silence. Two older women were watching Illumi with the same perverted appreciation as Hisoka. One of them used a cocktail napkin to subtly fan herself. 

“You should do something,” the first man said. He was the only one in the whole bar totally unaffected by Illumi’s outburst. Hisoka considered him for a moment. He was older, silver-haired, with a dark beard and the strong masculine face of a rock climber or a firefighter. He could be a Hunter, based on his reaction to Illumi. He could also just be an idiot. 

“Ah, you’re probably right,” Hisoka said, standing leisurely and stretching both arms overhead. Illumi twitched as he saw Hisoka move towards him in his peripheral. 

“Off we go,” Hisoka said airily as he approached Illumi. “Let the man bleed out in peace.” 

“I’m angry,” Illumi said tightly. 

“Yes, I can see that, so can your poor victim, sort of. Let’s go bang out that anger in our lovely apartment in our lovely bed, or maybe in our lovely shower, or on top of our lovely kitchen island, or--” The man’s face was wet. Hisoka frowned. 

No, what came first was that Illumi’s eyes were wet. 

He was crying. 

They were silent tears, the only kind Illumi produced. He was not prone to sobbing, Hisoka had regretfully come to learn, not even during the throes of passion. Still, Hisoka liked to try. 

“Oh, Illu, why are you crying, my love?” Hisoka held up a hand behind his back, subtly asking the bouncing manager for patience. He didn’t have to look behind himself to know he had been given some.

“I don’t know,” Illumi said softly. 

Illumi was too pretty when he cried. His big, black, matte eyes, as smooth as pebbles, turned wet and wide and glittery. His lashes clumped together like he was wearing mascara. His cheeks colored. 

“Let’s go home. I think you’ve made your point, darling.” Illumi stood slowly. He stared at the man for a moment, either dead or nearly there, and frowned. His lower lip jutted out. Hisoka recognized the expression for what it would precede just a split second before it happened. 

A single black wingtip shoe slammed down on top of the man’s skull, crushing it like a watermelon and soaking Illumi’s ankle and calf with brain matter. He gracefully hopped out of the man’s head, or whatever was left of it, and stormed–yes, stormed–out of the bar. Hisoka fished a hundred thousand Jenny out of his wallet and grinned apologetically at the horrified bartender. 

“That should cover my tab and the tip. Sorry about the mess.” And then he skip-walked as quickly as he could out the door in pursuit of Illumi. 

...

Hisoka found him just outside of the building, standing with his arms folded over his chest. He ignored Hisoka when he stood next to him, opting instead to continue staring at the vendor on the curb selling desserts. Despite the late hour, a mother and her son were ordering two popsicles from the man. The mother paid and they both laughed out twin  _ thank you _ ’s to the vendor, who waved a friendly goodbye. Hisoka found himself craving a popsicle, suddenly. He glanced at Illumi. He was still staring at the mother and son. Hisoka really hoped tonight hadn’t been a long-overdue manifestation of Illumi’s mommy issues rearing their head. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to begin unpacking that. 

_ Your boyfriend has issues.  _ Hisoka’s mouth twisted in irritation. Illumi’s issues were not that man’s business. Besides, Hisoka had issues, too. 

The one thing most people got wrong about the both of them was, truthfully, the most important. 

Hisoka was secretly very sad and Illumi was secretly very angry. 

Most people were not close enough to either of them to realize this. Not even Illumi’s parents knew the extent to which Illumi’s anger ran. It surged like a hot river under his skin, writhing and tumbling, bubbling up at seemingly random moments. 

Most people fell too easily for his cool exterior, which, Hisoka had learned after years of knowing him, was actually the amusing symptom of being an only child for a period of time with no children his age to play with. Illumi was actually just very, very awkward. 

Hisoka was the opposite in most regards. He was almost painfully charming, infuriatingly charming.  _ Persistent _ , Machi had corrected once. Hisoka was as good at talking to people as he was at killing them. But really, his desperation to fight powerful people was just a sad little reaction to being very lonely and very neglected. He wanted attention, no matter the form it came in. 

Illumi was sick of attention. He would have been perfectly fine if his parents had paid him none. Even after Killua had been born, and his incumbent title of heir had been removed, he was still the eldest Zoldyck child, and that meant they expected everything of him. Even after Killua, Illumi had been given too much of the wrong kind of attention. 

It was why they worked so surprisingly well. People were always so shocked to hear that Illumi Zoldyck and  _ Hisoka  _ were involved. Not just involved. No, they were in a healthy, serious romantic relationship, and they lived together. 

Hisoka liked to beg Illumi for attention, and Illumi liked to begrudgingly give it, and even reluctant attention from someone like Illumi was as precious as liquid gold (though, truth be told, Illumi’s attention was not given to Hisoka reluctantly, but rather, with the kind of quiet, single-minded intensity that only Zoldyck breeding and Zoldyck training could produce). 

And on the other hand, Hisoka showered Illumi with the kind of affection that was so saccharine, so overwhelmingly  _ Hisoka,  _ that it blotted out every crack of a whip, every bite of electricity, and every stab of brutally cold steel. 

They were a wickedly perfect pair. 

That’s what Hisoka wanted to say as he watched Illumi glare at the reflection of the moon in the still, black water settling in the street gutter. 

The banks of Illumi’s angry river were flooding. Hisoka felt his feet getting wet. 

“Illumi, it was very kind of you to defend me in there, though I fear you may have gotten overzealous.” Eyes he had stared into very many times before narrowed into slits, unrecognizable. 

“I don’t like it when people insult you.” He opened his mouth to say more and then closed it. Hisoka waited nonetheless. Illumi took the silence, chewed it for flavor, and spoke again. “I hate it when people dislike you. When people look at you the wrong way, I can’t help it, I want to kill them.” 

“I feel the same way about you,” Hisoka said seriously. Illumi shook his head, nose wrinkling. 

“No, it’s different.” He sounded frustrated. “I’m not--” Another pause, heavier, strained. “I’m not good at expressing myself, Hisoka. I’m not like you. I can’t explain why I feel this way about you. It’s similar to Killua. I--” 

“I certainly hope you don’t feel the same way about your little brother as you do me.” 

“Shut up, Hisoka,” Illumi said without heat. “I mean it consumes me. It’s gotten to the point where, if you’re gone, all I do is think about you. I feel like a  _ dog,  _ Hisoka. I’m so focused and anxious and obsessed. It’s disgusting.” 

“Hm.” 

“And I know you don’t feel the same way.” It wasn’t said bitterly. Illumi was certain but not hurt. 

“Illumi, my love for you--” 

“It’s not about that. Something is wrong with me. Either, I care about someone more than anything else in the entire world, to the point where I twist up inside every second they are out of my grasp, or–or they mean nothing to me.” Illumi unfolded his arms. His left shoe glistened darkly with gore. Even with his outfit in slight disarray, Illumi looked like the picture of elegance. Now completely free of its knot, his hair fell in a glossy black curtain around his shoulders. Hisoka played absently with a strand, curling it around his finger until its tip turned red from lack of circulation.

“Well, you needn’t worry, you have me well within your grasp,” Hisoka smiled faintly. 

“One day, I won’t,” Illumi said, mouth turning down at the edges. 

“No,” Hisoka responded firmly. He glanced sideways at Illumi. With a bolt of surprise, he saw that Illumi, for the first time in forever, was looking very, very sad. “I mean it, Illumi. What could separate us? Your family?” Hisoka scoffed at that. “I’ll kill them, and I’ll start with your fucking mother.” Illumi’s mouth twitched in amusement, but his eyes were still big and somber. 

“There’s nothing that could separate us,” Hisoka repeated, more intensely now. “We will both make sure of it.” Illumi kicked his heel against the wall he was leaning against. He was staring again. Hisoka followed his gaze to the dessert vendor, who was beginning to pack up his wares. 

“Excuse me,” Hisoka said, pulling out his wallet. The vendor looked up in surprise. He gave Hisoka a once over and then smiled. 

“I like your outfit, sir.” 

“Thank you, I like it, too. I would like two popsicles please.” Illumi watched from the shadows, hair framing his face beautifully. Hisoka, being himself, made sure to pick the most phallic-looking popsicle he could find for Illumi. He paid the smiling man and waved to him in thanks. 

“A popsicle,” Hisoka said, brandishing the dessert to Illumi like it was a weapon. Illumi took it with ginger fingers and unwrapped it slowly. He often did things slowly, like it was his first time. Hisoka wondered with mounting horror if this was Illumi’s first time having a popsicle. 

“It looks like a cock,” Illumi said flatly, studying the popsicle with an unamused gaze. Hisoka raised an eyebrow. 

“Only,  _ much  _ bigger than what I’m used to,” Illumi finished, giving it a very conservative lick. 

Hisoka laughed, loud enough to perk the heads of pedestrians walking on the opposite sidewalk. His laugh echoed like a gunshot, bouncing into the air many times over. 

“Was that a joke Illumi? That was excellent, you should do more.” Illumi had already begun to walk back towards their apartment, hair swishing with purpose. Hisoka skipped to catch up, slinging an arm around his shoulder. “Do you have any more?” 

“Leave me alone.” 

“Aw, come on Illumi, just–-uh oh, your popsicle is melting.” It wasn’t melting. Hisoka just needed an excuse to run his tongue up the entire length of Illumi’s popsicle, as pornographically as possible. Illumi made a face. 

“You’re embarrassing.” 

“Me? Oh, I don’t know Illumi. You made quite the spectacle tonight,” Hisoka said, clicking his tongue chidingly. Illumi frowned, as if suddenly remembering, as if he had somehow forgotten. 

“You really embarrassed me,” Hisoka continued, falsely pouting. “You’ll have to make it up to me tonight.” Illumi said nothing, but he gave his popsicle a long, indulgent lick. 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments and kudos are appreciated! I also might end up writing a second part to this that is actually explicit, but smut has always been a hit or miss for me with my writing, so we shall see!


End file.
